Mona Sharma
Appearances
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And two doctors are trained to take away the suffering. That's exactly what they did. So I should be thankful that that's what they did because to a certain extent, my palpitations did dissipate a little bit. Today what I know though and how I work with my clients is if you don't have a doctor who is your partner in healing, then you have to find yourself a new doctor. Agreed.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Doctors aren't trained to get to the root cause of my suffering. Doctors didn't ask questions about the root cause of my palpitations, when they started, how they started, what could be like the instigator behind it all. They didn't know the emotional turmoil that I was going the year that my palpitations started. It wasn't a concern.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So with that said, I think doctors, I work with people today, they have doctors who they've had in their families for decades. So out of loyalty and love, they don't want to leave them, but they're not even able to ask questions. Okay, so you want to put me on a statin. Is there something else that we can do before we go on the statin?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Or if I go on the statin, is there an action plan to potentially getting off the statin? Exactly. there should be an action plan that comes with it. So just ask questions. Like you know, there's a lot of doctors who, oh, you got the perfect bill of health, you're exercising, you're eating well, you have McDonald's once in a while, you're healthy, you're fine, you don't have to look at these labs.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Where now we know because of our genetics, living in our modern, very polluted, toxic world, where the nutrient density of our food isn't nearly close to what it used to be, The paradigms have completely changed. So we need doctors who are really, really interested in healing and bring our bodies back into balance. And I think that there's an awakening that's happening right now.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
But at the end of the day, I don't think in our lifetimes, unfortunately, you and I will ever see the day where big food, big pharma companies are ever going to... It's a for-profit industry right now. It is.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Yeah. And you brought up a really great point, which is probably what your audience appreciates most about you. Okay. So HRT, great. Amazing that, you know, peptides and everything are getting all of this attention. But why are the hormones out of balance to begin with? And that's the question that you're asking, right? Mm-hmm.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And whether you are dealing with diabetes, frozen shoulder, a cardiac issue, the instigation is all stress, right? Yes. So address the stress, where the stress is coming from. When I work with my clients, we not only address the physical body, it's the emotional body, the spiritual body as well. We have to look at the human physiology as this holistic paradigm instead of in singularity. Yeah.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
We have to move away from this like symptom treating protocol because treating one symptom and one medication could have a slew effect that throws everything else out of balance within the body.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Such a good point. Yeah, my journey definitely called me into this profession. It wasn't at all by choice. And I shared with you before, like growing up, my mom, I've only ever known her to have rheumatoid arthritis, like completely deformed.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Yeah, you're right. There's definitely key biomarkers that a lot of doctors aren't looking for. And like your mom, I think there's a generation, even today, ignorance is bliss. Like if I don't know about it, great. You know, even my in-laws, like they come from a family where the women and men tend to live a really, really long time.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So they just assume that the same is going to happen for them, right? Yes. But we live in a very different world than our parents, grandparents, and ancestors did. Like the tables have turned a little bit. So yeah, I would say when you're working with a doctor, if you really want to optimize your health, first question what you want, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So you and I were talking about when somebody hires me, they typically, Mona, help me get to this number on the scale. Help me get the six pack. Help me fit into this dress. Or for some people, help me get, you know, do pull-ups or handstands, right? And yoga, right? And that's fine. And I promise we can get there. But like your past and my past, we can get to the goal. And then what happens?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
We fall off this wagon and then we're looking for the next protocol or pill or person or whatever to follow. And then we're trying something else and trying something else. And I know your listeners will resonate with that. Enough of the wagon, enough with that. How about just focusing on how you're feeling every day? When you wake up in the morning, do you feel happy? Are you energized?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Does your body feel good? Are your bowel movements functioning? Are you having one to two bowel movements a day, which you should be? Are you hydrating? Are your joints loose? Do you have muscle pain? Just feel into your body and whether or not you feel good. And think about what your goals are. My goals in my 20s and 30s obviously are very different than now. Now...
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
The entire inspiration for me and everything that I do for my health is how I'm going to age. I want to be 90 or 100 years old with a backpack with my grandkid in the back, going up a canyon hiking.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And I think that if people can get in touch with the future version of themselves and how they want to feel, that alone is the motivation to stay on track, to eat like you love yourself, to speak like you love yourself, think like you love yourself.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So with my journey and my suffering, I never really felt the urge to ever complain because it never was as bad as my mom and the things that she's gone through. But nonetheless, I realize now, wow, there's a lot of people who need to hear my story because a lot of the things that people are suffering with today, we're calling their symptoms and suffering normal when it's absolutely not.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
instead of sabotaging ourselves the way that we do, like I did with hardcore exercise, hardcore diet, hardcore pills, hardcore strategies, whatever, you name it. And in finding a doctor, when I work with my clients, run your labs once if not twice a year. More than that if you're dealing with key inflammatory markers. So you mentioned some really significant ones.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
We're looking at our Lp , for example. A lot of that has to do with the genetic precursor, like you and I probably have. You have an Italian background, I have an East Indian background. It's something that's prevalent. Then you want to look at your triglycerides also. What's that number like? You want to look at your particle sizes. You want to look at your HbA1c as well.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
You want to look at your C-reactive protein, like key inflammatory markers that tells us whether or not your body is under a state of stress. From that state of stress, if you're ignoring those numbers, then of course you're now leading into this rut of what we call accumulation. You're accumulating inflammation.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
When you accumulate inflammation, you're probably not making the best choices for yourself, right? You're probably not understanding why the number on the scale goes up. why you're having certain food cravings, why your hormones are off, why your testosterone is dropping, right? It's like you've got to find the source of the inflammation in order to figure that out.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And like I say to all my clients, there's no perfect protocol out there. Your food plan, your supplement protocol should be completely different than what you're seeing on social media, than what you're seeing with your friends and your neighbors or whoever you follow on Instagram, right? It's the way that it should be. Your diet should be as unique as your blueprint.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So prior to health and wellness, my life looked very different. I come from the corporate cosmetic world. I worked really, really hard to just like do well in my profession because coming from an Indian father, I did not become a doctor or a lawyer. And with that came a lot of hustle and grind and I did it. And working for some incredible luxury beauty brands was probably somebody's dream job.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
It's the wild west out there. The supplement industry is going to continue to be the wild west. The food industry also, we can't trust the labels. Who cares about what's on the front of whatever label of the supplement or the food that you're eating? You've got to look at the back of the label. You also have to understand where it comes from.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And I think the really cool thing that's happening with science and with Western medicine is understanding genetic testing, right? So you brought up red yeast rice. A lot of people, whether it's a vitamin B supplement or even omega-3 fatty acids, we can actually now tell if you carry a genetic profile that doesn't even allow you to absorb these artificial supplements and stuff like that, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So it is complicated. Even as a nutritionist, it's overwhelming. And the only way to go through it is through trial and error.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And you brought up a really good point. So here you are, I'm saying, yes, understand your biology, go get your blood labs done, test out the supplements that you think you want to try out, test out different ways of eating to see if that makes you feel better. But trust also that it might take time for your body to actually respond.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
We come from a society where we want quick fix, instant gratification, I want to see the change right away. I have clients who get so pissed off, like if the number on the scale is not going down fast enough, they don't trust this process of healing. But you have to really, in Ayurveda we align our bodies with nature. A term that I love right now is circadian rhythm.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
We understand that every organ in our body actually has its own circadian rhythm. So here we are trying to go out, we're exposed to blue light all the time, trying to work harder, push harder. We are a nation that is more stressed than ever before in history, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
We're taking our bodies out of alignment instead of just coming back to the foundational truths of just like bring our body back into balance and resting and restoring, right? So just trust the process and that it might take a little bit of time, okay? And the second thing that I really would love to go back and hover on is You said that you're a spiritual person, right? Or religious person.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And I agree with you, like whatever your background is. But what really surprised me for my healing journey is it's almost like all of a sudden me going back to the ashram, the food didn't matter, the supplement didn't matter. And certainly I stopped working out. So that didn't matter either. So like my entire universe kind of just shattered.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Well, all the things that I thought that I was supposed to be doing to look a certain way and feel a certain way aren't true. But what am I doing? And I was attuning to my spirit.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So growing up was really confusing. So I went to a Catholic school, but on the weekends we would go to a temple. And in Toronto, there wasn't a Hindu temple in Toronto in the 80s, so we would go to a Hare Krishna temple. Wow. So, you know, Roman Catholic school, learning about Jesus and God and, you know, Mary and Joseph and no one that looked like me at all.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
It was definitely fun. I was able to work with a lot of celebrities and show up and do makeup at fashion shows and travel. But at the end of the day, it was a corporate sales job. And the typical corporate scenario where I was... trying to work harder than everybody else to get attention, to get a better salary. We were eating out constantly. We were drinking. I was smoking.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And then to the temple where, you know, we'd be dancing and singing and like Hindu gods and so confusing, right? What I love about the ashram, it's the Sivananda ashram, is they're non-denominational. There's pictures of all guides up on the wall. And in prayer, ultimately, and I think that this is true for all religions, your guide, your inner truth, your spirit, that is your guide.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
You're aligning with God or your higher spirit or whoever your deity is. And that was a foreign concept to me. And the miracle of that experience was it pulled me out of the very limited focus of, you know, always thinking about my body, my mind, my thoughts, my stress, how hard healing was, the exercise that I had to do, the physical pain, this, it's all like very selfish.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And then all of a sudden focusing on like becoming one with others and living in community and like connection with a higher source or belief outside of myself, it like pulled everything back and, And then I could take a holistic view of like, oh my gosh, like girl, you're so hard on yourself. Stop obsessing so much. Relax into it. Do what you love. Eat what you love. Eat to nourish yourself.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
You don't even have to diet anymore. Just eat real food.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
yes so again these basic foundations so that's where i just wanted to honor like the spiritual aspect whether you believe in god or not i just think it's so important to align with something that's bigger than yourself living in a world where diet and nutrition and healing is so self-absorbed i know and that's just it it i think and in you and me and my wife were talking about this when you find yourself that's when you kind of find your health yeah
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
But don't you notice there's beauty when you catch yourself going back to an old way? It's like drifting back. And I think it's important for your listeners to hear, I don't consider myself somebody who's healed. I still get my heart palpitations on occasion. And then that for me is like, it's happening again. What am I doing? Where am I out of alignment? Where am I really stressed?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Where am I not honoring myself? What kind of foods am I eating? I ask questions. Nothing matters when you don't have your health. And God forbid that happens to anyone listening. You have to take it from us. There's nothing, nothing matters when you lose your health. And that happened to me at a very young age.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So when you instead align with like what you and I are trying to do through everything that we try and all the companies and the supplements, which I'm so excited about is we're trying to bring our constitution back into balance, but to build the resilience back up. So what is resilience?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I was waking up in hotel rooms not knowing what city I was in because I ended up traveling so much. Like it sounds kind of cool, right? And it was. But my health was absolutely suffering, one, because of the job, but two, you know when you know that your purpose, your soul is just out of alignment? Yeah. Like I just wasn't meant to be there. And I knew that.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Like resilience is a child that comes into this world, they are glowing, they're happy, they own who they are, their bodies heal, their mitochondrial function is optimized, right? Like everything is just functioning at its best. They're resilient. Their body knows how to heal. And as we get older, we somehow lose that our bodies have the capability to do that.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Our bodies are healing, you and I right now in this moment without even thinking about it, right? Our hearts are beating for us to keep us alive. We never think about that, right? And I think that if we remind ourselves like, oh yeah, I'm doing things in my life to take the resiliency away from my body. So what do I need to bring resilience back into my life?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And through that, you can cultivate what your perfect healing protocol should be because it's going to be different for everybody.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Oh, yeah. I am a question asker. I want to know everything. You and I are in school for a reason because we're going to be eternal students, right? And I would say that as a society, I think that we have really lost touch with our intuition. Our bodies have a radar to tell us what is right and what is wrong.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And we live in a society that has trained us to when we go to our doctor's offices, they're wearing this white lab coat. They are right. I am wrong. So they're saying to do something, which means that they went to school for it. I have no right to believe it. I'm just going to trust what they say and follow along, whether or not it feels right.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So I knew things started to go sideways when I got these heart palpitations and these heart palpitations got so bad that I would be running on a treadmill and like literally had to grab on really quick. So I thought that I would pass out and I pushed through it for as long as I could. I still kept drinking and partying and doing all that. And then I just thought, like, this is ridiculous.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So it's funny, like when it comes to healing, I think that inherently, and this is what's kind of trending these days too, is like nervous system regulation, right? When we learn how to regulate our nervous system, we tend to trust, we come back in from into the knowing of our body, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
There's thinking about stuff all the time, thinking about education, thinking about what we should do, what we should eat, how we should work out versus knowing. No, I know what my body needs to heal. I know what makes me feel really good. I know what makes me feel happy in the morning. I know what I need to do every single day in order to to function in this insane, stressful world. Right. Yeah.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So the more that you can do to to practice using that muscle, building your, you know, trusting your intuition again to shift from thinking to knowing you're going to be on the right path. And it takes a lot of faith.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And I'm sure if I were to talk to you, like over the years, as we go through this journey of healing, there's going to be some people you've got to cut out of your life. There's just, there's no more alignment anymore. Or the people who think that you're woo or out there or crazy, like, you know, people who just think out of sight, out of mind, like, I don't want to hear about that.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Or I've been doing this for years. I've been, um, you know, I've been eating this way for years and I'm totally fine. And Are you like, are you do you really feel great every single morning? So I'm not meeting a lot of people who feel really great every single day right now. So I think that there's something that comes to that. And I think it is a very spiritual approach to healing.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So at that point in my life, in my 20s, I was not interested in getting to the root cause, air quotes, my healing. Like, I didn't want to do the work. I just wanted something that was fast, quick, take the suffering away from me. And that's exactly what the doctors did. They wrote me a prescription for a beta blocker medication. Yeah. And it worked. It took my palpitations away a little bit.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Yeah. And I love that you brought that up and congratulations. Like that's a really big deal to cut out pot. I know so many people who continue to smoke pot as almost like a coping mechanism. And we live in a society now where like we've really normalized it also. But you kind of pull back and ask yourself, well, who am I without doing this? Who am I without this habit?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And I would say when I work with my clients, without me even saying anything to you, if I were to follow you around for one day, you had Mona on your shoulder as you went around through your day from the morning until you went to bed at night. What is the one, two or three things that you are doing that you know are sabotaging your health, how you're feeling or your happiness? Right.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And most people are like, oh, OK, well, here we go. And they can write out a list. And by no means do you have to start by stripping away all of those things at the same time. Start with one thing. You know, simple thing for me that I've been working on is like just cutting back on coffee. I love coffee.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Oh, my God. I love the flavor, the aroma, the ritual, everything about it. But I'm also somebody like my adrenals need a lot of support. Like I tend to get wired really, really, really quickly. And I see it manifest on my laps. Right. So just start with the one thing. And I think maybe to simplify things like because I I wonder when people hear you and I speak.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
They're probably curious, like, one, what are we doing? Like, what are all the crazy things that we're doing? But, like, what are the foundations, right? I start with the foundations. Are you sleeping? Do you sleep well, right? We're talking about your sleep and your circadian rhythm, right? And now I'm the opposite.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I go to bed at 9.30 because it just feels good for the season that I'm in right now. And I'm really focusing on, you know... energy. Like I just want my body to heal. I had mold exposure a couple of years ago and it's just been a doozy just healing from that. So still coming back into balance. So are you sleeping? There's a lot of trackers out there.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I wear an Oura ring, there's whoop bands, there's all these things, but like they're worth the investment because you can see, are you getting deep sleep? You can look at your heart rate variability. So the variability in your actual heartbeat to see how that adjusts and shifts during times of stress. Are you breathing?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Like for a lot of my clients on a call, I'll say, can you just like take a breath? Oh yeah. They're just like, take a deep breath. Are you breathing properly? We're all so stressed or busier than ever before. We're like taking these short, shallow breaths every day when we can shift our nervous system just by breathing. The other really surprising one is are you chewing your food?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Like if you have digestive issues, let me see if you're chewing your food. Then break down the food before it gets into the stomach. You're going to be taking a whole lot of stress off your digestive system, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And then you can focus in on like taking out all the bad things and the seed oils and the processed foods or the too much alcohol and stuff like that. But start with the foundations first.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
It definitely slowed my heart rate down, but it made me completely lethargic. Like my brain fog was severe. I stopped being as active as I was. I forced myself to go to the gym and work out because I was so terrified of gaining more weight. But I ended up gaining 45 pounds. Like it was crazy. And like on a small frame, you really feel that. Yeah. So I went back to the doctor.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Did you have family meals growing up?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
They supported a lot of people with weight loss just by focusing on how they eat. Digestion takes up a tremendous amount of energy and work in your body.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And often when I'm speaking to groups of people or in conferences, I'll say, you know, by show of hands, how many people here suffer from heartburn, bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, you're taking antacids, burping, belching, and like every hand is up. Everyone is suffering from these digestive issues.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
If you're suffering from any of those symptoms, you literally are going through life with like a red engine light flashing. Your body's trying to communicate with you that something down here is not working and you're ignoring it. And we've normalized it, right? Like it's normal to have IBS these days. It's normal to have bloating. It's normal to not have a bowel movement every day.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
which is crazy.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
It's not normal. It's common, but it's not normal. So by simply, and this is what happens at the ashram. So I have an older brother and sister, but they're much older. So growing up, meals were kind of fast. We certainly never spent time sitting and relaxing. And then today's world, how are we sitting and eating? Most people have their phone on the table. They're scrolling.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
A lot of people are eating and driving for crying out loud. You're eating while you're working. Our ancestors would have smelt food cooking, which starts the digestive process. Just smelling food cooking tells your body, oh, food is coming soon, so start making those digestive enzymes to digest food properly, right? Now everything's instant and fast.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
When we're sitting down at the ashram though, no one has their phone out. We're sitting outside in nature. We're sitting amongst community. We're spending time in conversation with each other. We're eating a lot slower and the focus is really on chewing or chewing our food. And I couldn't believe I mentioned going back and eating all these different types of plant fiber.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
My digestion was fine, but I was taking time to digest and metabolize my food.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I'm like, okay, this clearly is not working. I can't remember things anymore. I'm not sleeping well. My clothes don't fit. My joints are sore. So they said, well, the next solution could be going in for a heart surgery, which was pretty major. They said that it was minor heart surgery. I don't think there's such a thing.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And what happens when you do that? You're cuing your satiety signals also within the brain to say, oh, maybe I don't have to eat so much anymore. The cravings subside. You're not constantly thinking about food or what the next meal is going to be or the next dessert. You turn on your body's intuitive eating to understand your body is full. You don't have to eat anymore.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Which, again, foundational truth.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Mm-hmm.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Yeah, so fasting, obviously, the science is there for men and for women. We, as women, need to be fasting in a very, very different way. A lot of my friends and colleagues have written books about fasting, and it's phenomenal what it can do for your body, for autophagy, for taking out inflammatory cells and preventing disease and reversing metabolic dysfunction and stuff like that.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
The science is there. So a couple of things. One... Fasting has been written about since biblical times, right? Amongst all religions, which I think is so cool. There's a spiritual aspect to it. It was almost like this gift to your body to restore.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
When you're not taking in food and not digesting, as we said, takes a lot of effort, your body can go in and like really tune into what needs the healing. It can take that energy and put it towards healing and repairing and restoring, which is special.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
But I think that we do fasting kind of backwards. I think that if you're going to skip a meal, like why do we break fast? We break fast and have food earlier on the day because food is information. Calories are energy. Energy is fuel. Fuel gets us through our day. It's our brain function, right? Right. I think it gives us energy to go out into the world.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Yeah. Like it's anyways, minor heart surgery, but it's to do something called an ablation where they burn off this electrical valve within my heart for a condition that I had, which was called atrial tachycardia. So I said yes. So 24 years old, going for my first heart surgery, and I was awake for the whole thing. You see your heart on a massive screen.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And you can argue like shifting your body into ketosis and using ketones for fuel and stuff like that. I get it.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
But for me, I think it just makes sense if you're going to skip a meal, try skipping dinner because the longer that you go without having food in your system or at least like four hours of no food in your system before you go to bed, you'll probably notice that your sleep scores are going to improve. And when we're eating dinner, it should be a smaller meal.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
We eat dinner as our largest meal of the day, but we don't need all that extra fuel at night before we go to bed. Makes sense, right? So I'm not saying like if you're on a fasting protocol and fasting in the morning feels really good for you and your blood labs are showing it, then stick with fasting during the day. If you're a woman, you know, fasting according to your cycle is really beneficial.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
You definitely don't want to be fasting for long periods of time during your third and your fourth week because you could be putting your body into more stress, increasing your cortisol, which is going to backfire. You're not going to lose the weight that you want to be losing. In the first two weeks, you know, something that I work with my clients on is can you fast for 12 to 14 hours a night?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Just in the practice, every single night, have dinner at 6 or 7, break your fast at 6 or 7. It's a solid amount of time for your body to just go in and repair and restore without having to do extra work, right? If you want to try on fasting therapeutically, you know, every Monday, for example, I will typically fast for about 16 to 18 hours, stretching my fasting time just a little bit more.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
which feels really good for me. But I would say that working with my clients, it's different for a lot of people, like figuring out what your fasting schedule should be based on your health goals, based on hormone imbalance, based on your glucose levels and stuff like that. Like it really takes a little bit of trial and error to figure out what works for you.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
what feels best for you and what keeps you happy. Like if you're fasting and you're miserable all the time, if you're going from zero to a hundred, if your partner's like, whoa, like what's going on? Probably just need some proper satiation, some nourishment.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Totally. I do think that how you start your day is everything.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So you probably start with some hydration.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
First thing in the morning.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
For me, it ranges. Sometimes I'll drink hydrogen water. Sometimes I'll drink water with lemon to support my liver. Lately, I've been drinking water with coriander seeds. Yeah. Coriander seeds are anti-inflammatory, which are, you know, really beneficial for or a type of tea is called CCF tea. Have you heard of that?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So you take a tablespoon of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, and fennel seeds. You soak them in some hot water overnight. In the morning, you strain the seeds and you just drink the tea and you have a tea that's really supportive for your hormones. Really, fennel is amazing for your digestion. The seeds are great antioxidants, which put out free radical damage to the body.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
There's some oils that come off the seeds also, which are really supportive for your digestive system, your digestive tract. So start your day with something that's going to One, help you eliminate toxins from sleeping from the night before.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
A wire goes through your neck and through your groin. These wires go through in every area. They induce you with caffeine, adrenaline, all these uppers to try to induce these palpitations that I knew would only happen if I was out doing something, moving my body, bending down to pick something up, like a fast movement. Yeah. Finally, a couple hours into it, my heart palpitations started.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Two, if it's something that's going to help to reduce inflammation, there's lots of studies behind hydrogen water also for that reason, start your day with something so supportive of your body before you put a coffee into it.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Yeah, you know, I've got to practice having more matcha first thing instead of caffeine. If I could push my caffeine from coffee back until about 10 or 11, I think that would be great.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Grounding first thing in the morning. Yes. The world is waking up like... Exactly. Oh my gosh, there's so much to do. Just go. Hustle, hustle, hustle. More caffeine. Go, go, go, go, go. You're starting your day off grounding, regulating your nervous system. You're actually sleep training, right? Have you read the studies around circadian rhythm?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So if you want to honor your body's circadian rhythm and support your body's ability to get into deep restorative sleep at night earlier, If somebody especially has a hard time falling asleep before midnight, get outside first thing in the morning. Your eyes up to the sky towards the sun, the red light therapy that we get from sunlight triggers serotonin production within our bodies.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
It tells our gut microbiome to produce serotonin, our feel-good happy hormone. And it's going to support you with your body's circadian rhythm throughout the day, which will help you sleep at night also.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Something that I did that's crazy, my one non-negotiable for 2024 was to walk every single Monday. So Monday I chose because typically that would just get me spiraling in stress and busyness and anxiety and worry. So every single Monday I'll go for a walk after I get my kids to school, no podcasting.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
No listening to anything, just literally me, my breath, my feet on the ground, looking up at the sky, feeling expansion, looking at nature around me. And I swear, it's like it's when some of my best thoughts come, my ideas come. I feel like I'm making better choices for myself throughout the day, which makes sense, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Like if I were to wake up instead on a Monday, look at my phone, start with coffee, have a second coffee, sit down on my computer without going outside, like that just shows you the quality of life that you're choosing for yourself, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Absolutely.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
They went off with an ablation. It feels like this fire or explosion just going off in your chest. And I thought, great, we did it. But I woke up the next morning in the hospital, same thing. Heart was pounding. Damn it. Okay, here we are again. Let's go in for a second heart surgery. Went in for the second surgery a couple months later.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
He's going to say that too.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I think the first question is look at everything that you're consuming and what your food addictions are. And, you know, in comparison to that, are oats really that bad? The second thing is I'm more in alignment with if there is a food that comes to us from nature that can serve our health and chances are it can be good for us.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
However, are there oats out there because it's such a massive commodity crop? Our oats have been sprayed with pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and glyphosate. So for people listening, if you don't know what glyphosate is, glyphosate is a pesticide created that's owned by Monsanto that has had detrimental effects. And there's incredible doctors like Dr. Zach Bush who,
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
who have literally looked at the onset of use of glyphosate amongst so many different types of crops and the rise of imbalances and disease and ADD and ADHD and stuff like that. So now, if you're looking for oats, you want to look for an oat brand that has a label that says glyphosate-free. There's two brands, Farmers We Know and Zego Oats.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Um, at this time, I just want everyone to know I was exercising hardcore. I was working out for like an hour, hour and a half at the gym. Um, I was on the Atkins diet, like restriction, like crazy. My girlfriends called my apartment, the house of free sugar, free carb, free fat, free this free, like I was restrictive. Right. And still my weight was going up. My anxiety was through the roof.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I'm not affiliated with them at all, but look out for those two brands. I do. There you go. Yeah. Do farmers too. Love them. Um, now in, from an Ayurvedic perspective, how you cook your food, how our ancestors cooked our food was very different than how we cook things today. Right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So even things like lectins and stuff like that, we would have used pressure cookers in the past and we would have soaked our beans and our lentils for a long period of time to limit the lectins that were going into our body. Oats are no different. If you're consuming a you know, an oatmeal that is a, what do you call it? Quick oats?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Yeah, quick oats chances aren't gonna have the quality of fiber that's beneficial to our health. So look for like a stone ground, whole grain oat, you know, that you can cook slowly, soak them if you like before you cook them. but also how you cook them. So you mentioned adding in butter.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So when I'm making oatmeal for my kids, they're not getting it every single day, but I can see it as a therapeutic food. I'm adding in some almond milk. I'm putting in probably a tablespoon or two of organic ghee, which is clarified butter, which has butyric acid, which is really great for our gut health. I'm cooking it slowly. And then I'm letting the oats cool a little bit.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So you're lowering the glycemic index. And that was the demonization of it too, right? Like, You know, eating your oatmeal is no different than having five candy bars. Well, yeah, it can be depending on how you're cooking and eating them, right?
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Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So for my kids, I might cook the oatmeal with dates. So I chop off one or two dates, which are loaded with fiber again. And then I might sprinkle some nuts and seeds on top of it.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
There you go. Yes, you're adding a fat, which is going to lower the glycemic spike along with the ghee, which is going to lower the glycemic spike. I might be adding in some berries, like wild blueberries also, additional fiber and antioxidants. There's no way a meal like that is going to be unhealthy for you.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I'm adding almond butter in it. Sometimes my son loves that. But I'm not dousing it with brown sugar and sugared berries. And they're not having heaping bowls of it at all, right? So look for the quality of oats. Be mindful of how you're cooking them and what you're cooking them with. And just be mindful to include some good quality fats.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And what's a solution for any type of food that tends to spike our glucose? Walk. Yeah. Go for a 15 or 20 minute walk after your meals, whether it's oatmeal or any meal for that matter. One of the rituals in my house is every night after dinner, before we put the dishes away as a family, clean up as a family, we all go out for a 15 or 20 minute walk. What is this going to do?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
It's going to bring down the spike of glucose from the foods that we ate, bring us back into a really healthy metabolic state, improve our energy also, support the digestion of our food. So don't stress about stuff like that.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
If you would ask me about like Doritos, right, then we have to talk.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
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If you're going to ask me about like white Wonder Bread and Cheez Whiz and stuff like that, then we've got to talk.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I would say the greatest service, like without anything that we've talked about today, go into your kitchen, your fridge, your cupboard. You can ask yourself, okay, what would Mona not want to see here?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
then you don't even need me just, you know, to throw that out. And the second thing is like how much of this comes from the earth and how much of this comes from a factory. And if it comes from a factory, chances are it won't serve your health. If it comes from the earth, chances are it will fuel your health. So you get to decide.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Yeah, so your metabolic health, if you want to look up someone, Dr. Casey Means, do you know who she is?
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Yeah, she's a dear friend of mine. Her name is Callie.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I was definitely sad. I definitely had major digestive issues. I wasn't sleeping at all. My joints were sore. Like this was like, you know, just plummeting at a really fast pace. So obviously when the doctor said, second surgery, this is a solution. Let's just go do it. I was game. But in the second surgery, I remember crying, like really bawling my eyes out. Like, what the hell am I doing?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So Casey is a co-founder of Levels, which is a continuous glucose monitor. And through their study and research, they can literally see how metabolic dysfunction can be directly correlated with diseases like Alzheimer's, obesity, cancer, you name it, right? And this wasn't an issue for any of our ancestors because again, the quality of our food was different.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
We're eating a lot more fiber and we were leading a lot less processed foods. Today, having processed food in our diet is normal. Eating from a package is normal. And yet when we eat these foods, and if you're wearing a continuous glucose monitor, which I highly recommend to people, so you can see how different foods impact you,
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
you'll see how when you have a certain food, if it causes a dramatic spite, right? So for people who are listening, it's like, um, it looks like a mountain and a molehill, right? It's mountain and mole instead of just like, let me say that again. Yeah.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So if you're wearing a continuous glucose monitor and you see these massive spikes and dips in your glucose and that causes metabolic instability throughout the day, meaning you're seeing constant spikes and dips and constant spikes and dips, chances are that you're the type of person who's constantly thinking about food, who's constantly thinking about having the donut to pick me up, the coffee in the afternoon, the crackers, whatever it is, like I need a boost, I need a boost.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
instead of somebody who has great metabolic flexibility who can handle these metabolic spikes but come back into a neutral zone. So how often are you doing that to yourself throughout the day? If you're eating oatmeal for breakfast without having good quality fats and then having a donut and then having pasta for lunch, white rice for dinner and all these starches, chances are you're doing that.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So this is why this year you've probably seen a lot of people talking about how to build a plate. When you build a plate, you want to focus on having a balanced meal, like our ancestors did, of a good quality protein, really great carbohydrates that come from the earth, which is fiber, and good quality fat.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So when you're eating the starches, like we said about the oatmeal, and merging it with a protein or a fat, you're going to lower the glycemic spike of that food.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So when you look down at your plate, ask yourself, what am I missing? Do I have a carb or protein and a good quality fat at this meal or do I need to add something in that will really be supportive?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Or if you know you're going to go out for an amazing Italian dinner, right? What did the, what do the Italians do when they serve bread? They have olive oil or balsamic vinegar with it. That's going to lower the spike of the bread. They have whole grain bread, which isn't touched by the chemicals that we have. That's another story.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Or if you're Indian or Filipino, there's always lentils or good quality fats or those starches were slow cooked or... Even cooling your rice before you eat it is going to lower the spike of the rice. So lots of little hacks that you can look into. But yeah, wearing a continuous glucose monitor is something I do with all my clients to give us insight to how healthy their metabolic function is.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
For sure. Yeah. Levels Health, they've got an amazing app. You simply take a picture of your meals. You scan the monitor and it tracks everything for you. You get a report the next day of like what the ratings are. Like this meal was really great for you. This one wasn't so much so that you can start to learn how your body metabolizes different foods.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Then it probably means that you might be working through some instability throughout the night. If you're spiking, you're going to crash, right? And often if people crash too low, then they're waking up. Or if it's because you've had a meal too close to bed, it means your body is just working really hard to digest your food, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I'm having heart surgery. I'm 24 years old. What is my life? I'm sad about a lot of things in my life that are happening. Doctors never asked me about that. They just wanted to know, well, how much McDonald's are you eating? How much are you smoking? How much are you drinking? And I wasn't necessarily doing too much of that. But I was really sad.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
A lot of people when they go through fasting protocols, if you're fasting for one, two or three days, which is a protocol for some people, their glucose might be really, really low and that might cause them to wake up a lot. So if you are somebody who wakes up consistently throughout the night and you don't know why, look at your glucose. That might give you some insight.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Yeah. So I'm always cautious answering this question because I'll never forget the day where someone had purchased a call with me with their mother. And I went through my whole spiel of what foods to take out, what foods to focus. And halfway through the conversation, Mona, we live in a food desert. You want me to get these healthy, unprocessed foods.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
That would take me 45 minutes just to get to the store that might have some of them, right? Yeah. So for anyone listening, just do the best you can with this knowledge. So let's dive into the biggest culprits. So one of the biggest culprits, I would say, is refined seed oils, refined vegetable oils that we know now are causing inflammation to our bodies. Okay.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So canola oil, eating out as you said before too, like whenever you eat out, they're not cooking with olive oil or just plain old butter or ghee or anything like that, they're using cheap refined seed oils or canola oil or vegetable oils because they're cheap, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
But these oils are heated at such a high temperature, they are refined, they are likely rancid and like I said, they tend to cause us inflammation and they are in everything.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
My biggest pet peeve is you go down, even a really healthy grocery store, if you go down the kid's snack aisle, you'll maybe find one brand of snacks that even has the label on the front that says gluten-free, healthy, keto, whole grain or whatever. You turn the box around, the ingredient, the second ingredient is canola oil, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
yeah it's horrible if just go through your cabinets if you have any food product that says canola oil on it throw it in the trash do yourself a favor you don't have to go on a diet just get rid of those foods first if you don't believe me go and go to youtube and google how canola oil is made and you will never ever want to consume it ever again it's disgusting I don't. Yeah.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And like the food industry is really tricky. So oat milk was also demonized, right? Yeah. Oat milk had canola oil in it amongst a bunch of sugar also. Rapeseed is another word for canola oil.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And there was a lot of internal emotions that I hadn't dealt with. I was stuffing everything down. When I would drink, obviously, like many people, it was to mask something that was happening within me. Like, I don't have to think about my problems anymore. Great, let's go do that. But in the second surgery, they said, okay, well, we found another area where we can do the sublation.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Right? Yes. So rapeseed, also you want to just get rid of that. So whether you have canola oil, vegetable oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, cottonseed oil, palm oil, like all of these oils are inflammatory. If you want to look for safer oils to cook with or even in your processed foods, you want to look for olive oil.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
You want to look for something that's a little safer like avocado oil or even coconut oil. Those are much safer options especially to keep in the house.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Cooking with butter also and ghee, like I'm a really big proponent of that. I'll use avocado oil if I'm cooking something at a high temperature. That would be the first thing. The second thing is sugar, right? And you talked about like healthy earlier. Healthy to us and healthy to somebody, you know, walking down Santa Monica might be completely different, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Sugar is something that you want to get out of your diet. And I'm not talking about cane sugar. Right. Our ancestors all use a little bit of cane sugar and they were fine. We didn't see obesity in those days. I'm talking about glucose, fructose, all of the syrups that are going into foods also to make them sticky and trigger the reward center in your brain to want more of those foods.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I'm talking about Coca-Cola and sodas and. and all of those carbonated beverages that are completely toxic for our health. There's a direct correlation with how they impact our digestion. They cause us to crave more sugar over time, how they're linked to obesity, obviously to diabetes, metabolic instability also. So it's not about no sugar.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Like you will find sugar in my house, but we make responsible choices around it. And I would say, again, the second category that that goes into is these ultra processed, ultra packaged foods that tend to come in boxed packaged foods, right? Um, what would the third one be? Third one I would say is like a lot of these refined flours, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Like we were eating so much almond flour, processed flour. Um, and they just like, it's just too much, right? They're more than our ancestors would have ever used. So just notice how many refined processed foods that you're consuming. Um, your breads, if they use the word enriched, I was just going to say enriched. Yeah.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Like anything that has to be enriched is like, there's no, there's nothing in that that's going to serve your health.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Like when it says artificial, artificial colors, artificial dyes, especially gosh, parents, I know it's not easy for your kids to avoid all the artificial stuff, but like, if you don't buy it, they can't eat it. It goes for you, too. If you don't buy it, it won't be in the house for you to eat. And if we're going to make any changes to our food system, we need to control with our dollar.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
If we don't give money to the companies who are just using that money for marketing and advertising, by the way, those foods are not expensive. They are cheap as hell to produce. They spend more on the marketing, the advertising to you and your kids to make you buy that food than what goes into the actual food in itself. And it's not real advertising.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
If we go through with it, you might have to wear a pacemaker for the rest of your life. And honestly, Dylan, it was like one of those typical scenarios that you hear about. My life flashed before my eyes.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Remember, if it comes from a processed packaged food, it's boxed. It's dead. There's little to no nutrient value to it.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I imagined what it would be like to be on medication, identifying as somebody who had a heart condition for the rest of my life, on top of having this, you know, battery pack come through my skin forever, right? Yeah. No way. Like, this is not my life. This is not happening. This cannot be my future. And the irony with all of this, as I shared with you, my upbringing was very different.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Exactly. All of a sudden you're microdosing chemicals.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Yeah, so the order that the listed means that the first ingredient is what has the highest quantity within that product. At the end of the day though, like if you don't know what an ingredient is, like literally you don't know what it is, don't know where it comes from, don't know how it was made, neither will your body. And your body will not know what to do with it.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
It will be contributing to the inflammation or the accumulation that you are experiencing. And that's such a good point too, right? Because a lot of people will probably come to us and say, oh, I've been eating this for 20 years and I'm totally fine. Disease doesn't onset overnight. It's the result of accumulation over time. So it's not just the toxins from the food.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
It's not just the chemicals from, you know, the products that we're using. Think about all the toxins that you are consuming anywhere from, like, if you really want to go down the wormhole on this one, right? Yeah. Your personal care products, your toothpaste, your deodorant, your face washes, however many products you use on your hair, your skin every single day, your toothpaste, stuff like that.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Think about your clothes, the plastics that come in your clothes. Recently I tried to find socks for my kids that didn't have elastane in them or spandex. It's virtually impossible, right? Microplastics are becoming such an issue within our blood. Children, umbilical cords now have microplastics in them, right? Like these toxins are now... So we get to a toxic burden, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
You want to go around your house, how many toxins are lingering in the laundry detergents, in the cleaning products, in the dryer sheets? you know, and the plastics on whatever's hanging up around your house, right? Like everything is plastic. And the containers that your food is sold in.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And look, like you can go crazy where at that point, I understand ignorance is 100% bliss, not knowing what you're getting yourself into. But knowledge is power. And if you are concerned with living a happier, longer life, and if you are concerned with turning off the genetic markers that you have that might lead to you getting a disease or not, we've got to pay attention.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So just try to reduce your toxic burden. So if you're going to choose the quest bars, you're probably taking away toxins from bucket A so that the sucralose every once in a while for you is okay. You're mindful of when your body's inflamed. Right.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
But I would say the key things that you know that you could take out of your life, take out the toxins and what could be fueling the toxic burden within yourself, because that will probably make you feel better, too.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Oh, totally. A depressed person, just go work out.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
The beautiful thing about my dad's background is he had an insight on Ayurveda, which is an ancient Indian healing, you know, way for healing the body. And my mom with her arthritis, you know, he saw a solution to, um, by taking us to live at an ashram every single summer. So this ashram was in Val Moran in Quebec, in Canada, where I'm from.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
You got it. It's a choice. It all comes down to choices. Yes.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
We are reading as much information as we can. Right.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And I think that's a really good point to own in on. It is choices. And if you think back, like whether you have kids or not or have a pet and here you are, like you're looking at ingredient lists as best as you can. You want to make the best decision for this little being so that they are feeling their absolute best. Why does that stop?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And why then for us, do we feel like it's okay to put these things into our body? A lot of it is food addiction. Food scientists are hired to make foods more addictive. Every detail is thought of when you go to a fast food restaurant or to a restaurant to make you buy more, to think about the extra order, the bigger size of the fries or the more sugar or the dessert. Everything is thought out.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
You might not feel like you have any control. until you put yourself, your higher self into the driver's seat. If your best friend came to you and said, God, I'm really suffering. I'm not sleeping well. I feel sad. You know, my cycle is off. Um, I'm gaining weight. I don't want to feel this way anymore. What advice would you give to them?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Like what's the one place where you would start and then maybe reverse the mirror. And like, if you could love yourself that much, what choices would you make that would be different?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
100%.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
No, not at all. So yeah, that's a good place to start. Like is there stuff within you that you know you've got to deal with? And then the second place is just look at how you're nourishing yourself. I coach my clients and like when you have this lens, when you go home and you walk into your kitchen, you walk into your pantries, what if you were to consider that your first line of health care?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
That's the place that's going to dictate how you're going to age, whether or not you're going to get sick, how your body looks, what your energy and your mood are like. You're going to fill it with the best things.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And we spent time every summer living in the mountains, waking up, meditating, doing breath work, two hours of yoga, living in nature, living in communities, spending time in prayer, chanting, singing. Like it's the ultimate wellness retreat, but As a kid, I don't know if you went to like fun summer camp. I didn't go to fun summer camp. I got to go to yoga camp.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So I'm on a mission to really merge the wisdom that all of our ancestors had, which I probably said a thousand times today. I think there's a lot of wisdom that comes from these ancient practices and doctors that honored the wisdom of our bodies to heal, but also foods, ingredients, teas, how to use, you know, things from nature to help us, right? That was very much part of my healing journey.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I want to merge that with the Western world and Western medicine where we need it. Like if we need surgery, you need a heart surgery, you want to get to a specialist at a hospital, right? But there's a time and a place. And I think that the sooner that the two worlds come together, the future of healthcare will be integrative healthcare.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Imagine going to your doctor's office and before your visit, you're sitting in a waiting room taking deep breaths, right? Tuning in to what is actually wrong, questioning, Like when did these symptoms actually start? How do I feel? How do I want to feel, right? Merging acupuncture with a medication that you're going on with an action plan to get off, right?
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So it's merging Eastern and Western medicine called rooted in wellness for that reason, because that was my healing journey. And, um, so yeah, people can find me through rooted in wellness as my podcast. I have incredible guests, men, women from all different backgrounds, kind of shedding light on this topic.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And I think that the more information that we have on how to heal and take ownership back that way, the better the future looks for our health. We're empowered. If you go to my website, monasharma.com, I have a really great foundation of healing, eight pillars of being rooted in healing. You can get a course there that's for free. Find me on Instagram.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I'm the person that's how you and I connected. I answer all my messages. I really love the sense of community and empowering each other and staying in touch that way.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Thank you. Yeah. Such a pleasure.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
That's okay.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Amazing.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Done and done. Oh, that was fun. Yeah, we covered a lot, which I love.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So what my parents didn't know that they were doing was imprinting these rituals to my life. So in that moment in the heart surgery, I knew that I had to go back to my roots. That's exactly what I did. I quit the corporate job, went back to my roots, became a yoga teacher, a meditation teacher, a holistic nutritionist just for the sake of my own healing journey.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I ended going back into the cosmetic world for a little bit of time, but I became a nutritionist while I was there as like an exit strategy. When I went back to the ashram, the weight melted off my body. I was finally dealing with all of the open running tabs that were in my mind, the chaos that was in my body. I started eating like a really clean plant focused diet.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I was finding stillness every single day and my palpitations stopped. Wow. So I knew that this was a message that I had to share with the world because the diet industry is insane. People, I'm sure some of your listeners are still looking for the next red pill, the diet, the protocol, the guru to follow.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
And we're on the cycle of looking for, and it's like, it's time that we end that cycle and just heal.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Thank you so much. So excited to be here. And like I said, so what an honor to meet you in person and connect with your wife. Also beautiful energy. Thank you.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
There's a couple of things I would say if I had to put them in order. First and foremost, it was a level of stress, sadness, and anxiety that I had in my life that I'd never really learned how to process. Although I knew about meditation and breath work and all of these beautiful modalities and I did practice yoga. For me, because I grew up with it, it was kind of like a checklist.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Like, okay, I'm going to be mindful today and I'm going to tap into a mindfulness practice. Okay, check, did that. Instead of actually dropping into it.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
and the reason why i say that's first is because when i went to do my yoga teacher training have you ever done a yoga teacher training i haven't no so what happens often when you go away to these retreats you're living with community for about four weeks in the second or third week of practicing yoga for god knows how many hours a day the yoga teachers start to drop like flies from their yoga mats
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
They're having these emotional releases, sometimes physical releases. And I remember looking around, it's like, wow, out of the 20 people, there's like four people left in class today. And that was me as well. I just would go and cry and recognize all of the things that I was bearing down.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So if you think about it, if you're living in a state of extreme stress, worry, sadness, or anxiety, are you going to make the best decisions for your health? Like for me, exercising, I wasn't exercising for the joy of moving my body. I was exercising for the sake of this number on the scale to not fucking go up. Like I have to fit into these pants.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
If I was meditating, I was doing it because, you know, someone said it's good for me and I can check it off my list to show that I'm a type and I can get a lot of things done. Right. Right. So that was first and foremost. With the education lens that I have now, looking back, the second thing, there was definitely deficiencies. My diet, I was probably eating the same foods every single day.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
I was drinking chlorinated water. I was definitely deficient in magnesium. I was not taking electrolytes for the amount that I was sweating. There was definitely metabolic dysfunction because I noticed that when I would cut out refined starches and flours, I didn't get my palpitations as much.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
But when my glucose was stable, eating higher protein, that's why I chose the Atkins diet, I felt a little bit more regulated. But the second something stressful happened or if I were to skip a meal, just instantly back into tachycardia. And then the last thing was probably my gut. My digestion was a mess. I was bloated after every single meal.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
What I said about the laxatives, if you're taking laxatives consistently, you're dehydrating your colon, right? You're likely killing off colonies of good bacteria that are responsible for keeping you healthy, that are responsible for your food cravings and your energy and your focus, right? Yeah.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So here I was with this lack of diversity on top of being on antibiotics from every single year, from when I was three years old till about 16, when my mom found a functional medicine doctor. So no doctor had ever addressed that. My mom focused on probiotics a little bit.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
So much fun with the energy of the other person.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
But we know today that in order to build back and colonize good bacteria in your gut, it takes eating a lot of plant fiber, getting a variety and diversity of nutrient-rich polyphenols, right? So when I was at the ashram, I was eating more carbohydrates from the earth, like plant-based carbohydrates, potatoes, starches, squash, stuff like that than ever before.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
But at any given meal, I probably would have had 15 to 20 different types of fiber. Right? Which is like unheard of in our world, right? Especially if you're dieting. So I think it was a culmination of all those things that ultimately allowed my body to heal.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Honestly, you nailed it. This is literally the inspiration for my podcast to merge ancient medicine and ancient rituals and ancient practices with modern day medicine because we need both. But I would say the Western medical system as we know it, it's broken, right? The rate of diseases are on the rise. The rates of prescription drugs amongst adults and youth are on the rise.
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing , and so much more!
Diabetes, cancer, obesity amongst adults and children is all on the rise. Like the system is broken, right? So I did go through a period when I was really pissed off. Like, why did I have the heart surgeries? Why didn't we go through like every other modality first and leave that as a last resort? But then I understand like at that time I wanted the quick fix one. So that was on me.